FrancisCorps Difference

FrancisCorps is a 50/50 experience. It’s 50% about the wonderful service you will do to serve the poor. But it’s also 50% about the experience of community that you will share with the other volunteers in your house. Saint Francis and Saint Clare both believed that it is necessary to have a solid experience of community where you share your day, your prayer, your life with one another. It’s here that you will grow and stretch. It’s this natural human “give-and-take” where you meet Christ. It’s this experience that gives you what it takes to serve others. It is through this balance that you not only change the lives of the people you serve but are also changed yourself.

In order to do this, you and your other other FrancisCorps community members commit to:

Eat at least one meal together, daily,

Pray together some form of prayer, daily,

Be available to one another to share your journey and experience, daily,

Celebrate community night with a FrancisCorps support person, weekly,

Share in a community meeting, weekly.

This is no small commitment and we recognize intentional community, while offering tremendous reward, will be challenging at times and in most cases a brand new experience for you and your fellow volunteers. Therefore, FrancisCorps commits to providing you and your volunteer community ample support through:

Monthly one-on-one meetings with each volunteer,

Joining the community for weekly community night,

Sharing a weekend retreat focused on community dynamics,

Maintaining open and available lines of communication between you and your volunteer community and the entire FrancisCorps staff.

FrancisCorps offers a 50/50 difference: 50% service, 50% community, but the foundation is 100% prayer. Your experiences of service and community are grounded in faith. While you will experience prayer as a community on a daily basis, you and your community will also share Mass and faith sharing weekly.

FrancisCorps will also provide you with a comprehensive retreat experience throughout the year that is specifically designed with you in mind. These retreats include:

Orientation Retreat (First Week of Year)– Introduction to FrancisCorps and the persons of Francis and Clare of Assisi

Fall Retreat: Community (Weekend) – Dynamics of Living Together

Winter Retreat: Service (Weekend) – Discover the Intersection of Faith and Service

Lent Retreat: Prayer (Weekend) – Personal Growth and Spirituality

Transition Retreat (Last Week of Year) – Reviewing the year and saying Good-bye

Pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy

The FrancisCorps experience is integrated in its entirety with a very special pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy provided to you through the generosity of the benefactors of FrancisCorps. On this 9 day pilgrimage, experienced in the last weeks of your FrancisCorps year, you will have the amazing opportunity to integrate your lived experience of community, service and prayer while walking in the footsteps of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare of Assisi. Through your community’s continued commitment to prayer, the retreat experience and the pilgrimage to Assisi, you will deepen and integrate all you will do and see throughout the year through a Franciscan lens.